If the Democrats don't get the youth vote, they're toast. That happened in Virginia, New Jersey, and Massachusetts, where young Obama voters stayed home in droves. It's an ugly conceivable future portended by a new Harvard poll that shows forty-one percent of young Republicans planning on voting in November, compared to 35 percent of young Democrats and 13 percent of independents. A recent Pew poll showed a similarly disturbing pattern: Young voters still prefer the Democrats, but their margin is slipping and their enthusiasm level is worse.
Some reasons and some solutions:
The Democrats need to tackle youth joblessness. They've passed important changes in student financial aid, like income-contingent loan repayment. Most students and recent students don't know about them, and they need to. But with youth unemployment at near-record levels, it's understandable that young men and women would feel angry and frustrated. If the Democrats want to keep this generation, they need to pass major jobs bills, probably through reconciliation, since the Republicans seem to be only too eager to leave young voters demoralized and unemployed. It would be nice if the Obama administration were leading on this more strongly, but since aren't leading strongly enough, the push to make jobs the top priority has to come from the grassroots. This happened in the 1930s under Roosevelt. Seventy-five years later, I can visit a Works Progress Administration-created library or go for a run on a Works Progress Administration-created boardwalk, and reap the benefits of programs that also gave millions of people desperately needed jobs. We need to make equivalent investments now, targeted at those who need jobs the most.
Dashed hopes also matter. Politics may be the art of compromise, but from health care to Guantanamo to Afghanistan and the bank bailouts, the compromises of the Obama administration have added up to belie the image of a candidacy of change. To reverse this trend, the administration needs to stand up more strongly, and with less apology and with less apology and deference toward those who have no interest in solutions, on all the other issues that matter.
But we need more than specific programs or even Presidential initiatives. We need to give people a renewed sense of why involvement matters. Absent a sense of how social change has occurred in the past and can again, it's tempting to give up when you've barely begun, all the more in an instant attention and instant gratification culture. Given that few of us know the stories of how previous citizen activists persisted and prevailed, it's understandable that many who were acting so passionately just over a year ago feel adrift and unable to make an impact. That's true of more experienced activists, but it's particularly true of those for whom the Obama campaign was first step into trying to create a more humane common future. Those of us who've been involved longer (including veteran youth activists) need to offer this perspective, to help those more recently involved avoid cynical resignation and withdrawal.
We need these lapsed activists and particularly lapsed youth activists, because they're the ones who will reach out to their peers. During the 2008 election, you could go anywhere in battleground states and find efforts to engage young voters. In the Virginia, New Jersey and Massachusetts elections, the campaigns largely ignored them and the parallel independent efforts that might have filled the gap didn't exist. Without being reached by these more personal approaches, young voters were left more isolated, more readily manipulated by 30-second ads, and more likely to simply stay home. As I explore in my Soul of a Citizen book, change works best when people approach those they already know, within familiar contexts. And when campaigns, movements, and their supporters reach out in ways that offer a chance for genuine dialogue. Some of this can be through social media--we need the texting, Facebooking, and other networking that helped the Obama campaign bloom. But these approaches work best when complemented by more visible public actions and more direct personal dialogue. If we're going to enlist those who once acted and speak to their legitimate discontents, we're going to need to recreate this one-on-one reach, and begin to recreate it now, not just in the last two weeks of the campaigns.
As the recent surveys imply, the stakes in this are huge--not just for now or for November, but for the ongoing allegiance and participation levels of a generation. Whether citizen activists can help the Obama administration and the Democrats reengage those who carried them to victory in 08 will shape American politics not just in the coming year, but for decades to come. The Obama administration can play a critical role in demanding action on issues that affect young voters' lives. The Congress can use all available options, including Reconciliation, to pass them. But it's up to the rest of us to offer the examples of connection, context, and continued commitment.
Paul Rogat Loeb is the author of Soul of a Citizen: Living with Conviction in Challenging Times, whose wholly updated new edition will be released March 30, of The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen's Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear, named the #3 political book of 2004 by the History Channel and the American Book Association, and of Generation at the Crossroads: Apathy and Action on the American Campus. See www.soulofacitizen.org To receive his articles directly email sympa@lists.groundwire.org with the subject line: subscribe paulloeb-articles. To sign up for the weekly excerpts of Soul that HuffPo will be running on the book page each Thursday visit www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-loeb
Follow Paul Loeb on Twitter: www.twitter.com/http://twitter.
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They started turning away there, just one more politician that said it to get into office then forgot about them. He smoked the stuff himself, he knows the lies are lies, and still, he condones the arrest of Americans for what are, exclusively, political reasons. Hypocrisy is a great turn off when you are filled with the fire and idealistic fervor of youth.
Why, just this week a man got 35 years in prison in taxes, for possession of pot. The prosecutor asked for 99 years- for a fifty four year old man.
Cruel, inhumane and sadly too usual a punishment.
Federally condoned.
His name is Henry Walter Wooten.
If you wish, you can help him out here.
http://war.change.org/actions/view/free_henry
The one piece of legislation intended to help america's youth and reinvest in our education is being stomped on. at the same time young people are being forced to buy obscenely expensive health insurance with being offered any options.
democrats are losing the youth and losing fast.
they've already lost me.
The only reason Republicans win is because the blocs that favor Democrats don't show up. For young voters this is often because they don't see voting as making enough difference to justify... not playing video games? What? The young voters tend to be one of the more privileged groups who are liberal... and, sadly, many of them will not be liberal when they finally do have their careers established. See all those Tea Partiers? They used to be hippies (that paints an ugly picture, doesn't it?).
Democrats can't focus so much on the youth, despite the fact that their being a more mobile group makes them just a case of motivating, that they lose focus on other important demographics that don't make it to the polls: the poor, the disabled, underprivileged minorities... We need them too and need to stay focused on ways not only to make voting more appealing to them- but more possible!
The youth are disappointed due to soaring expectations. Another big attempt to push their expectations up will make the disaster greater. Perhaps we should focus more on the battle between the attainable and the alternatives, rather than feeding naive ideas of rapid reform... Otherwise these hippies are going to be yuppies in a couple decades.
I actually don't think it's correct, however that the Tea Partiers were ex-hippies, and certainly not ex-liberal or leftist activists. I've heard a few pundits assume that, but I've seen not a shred of evidence in those who've been interviewe3d.
We as the youth and Future of this country DO NOT WANT TO BE SADDLED WITH YOUR DEBT
AND RECKLESS SPENDING AND DESTRUCTION OF THE ECONOMY
BOTH PARTIES ARE GUILTY OF THIS...
AND BOTH PARTIES SHOULD BE HELD LEGALLY ACCOUNTABLE..
ITS TREASON... NO MATTER HOW YOU SLICE IT....
BOTH PARTIES HAVE BETRAYED US
Oh my, how dumb the phrase "Change you can believe it" sounds now....
Those that defend Obama considering his near complete failure at leading a nation in crisis, deserve what "we" get. His failures stupefy one's imagination and seem completely "on-purpose". He has destroyed the belief that real progress can happen which is worse than Bush when at least we thought we had an alternative. I conclude he is a fake president and DEMS are for the most part GOP-lite.
With DEMS like these who needs republicans? The Obama presidency has proven our country has been taken from us and we are now a plutocracy. It seems that somehow we require a 3rd party as the only way to rid ourselves from DEM/GOP corporatist party.
The thin gruel they are offering up like an insurance industry friendly, watered down health care bill won't excite anyone. How a Democratic president utterly failed to get a serious, major jobs bill passed NO MATTER WHAT THE RIGHT WING SAID is astounding.
Honestly, the health care bill has only hurt the Democrats as far as most young people are concerned. We want to see more--a public option would be plenty, we know the country isn't ready for single payer--and as young, predominantly healthy people with little use for health insurance and little hope to get it subsidized, we stand to lose the most from a mandate.